BREAKING: CropX adds nitrogen-optimizing tech to its farm management array with EnGeniousAg acquisition

• Farm management system provider CropX has acquired EnGeniousAg, which makes precision tools for optimizing nitrogen management in the field.
• The deal is CropX’s sixth acquisition to date; financial terms were not disclosed.
• CropX will integrate EnGeniousAg’s nitrogen-sensing technology into its farm management platform, while EnGeniousAg employees will join CropX full time.

Growers face ‘huge uncertainty’ in managing nitrogen levels

Nitrogen is one of the highest costs for outdoor agriculture, says CropX chief revenue officer John Gates, adding that in many cases it’s on par with the cost of land and seed inputs.

For all that expense, plants only use a percentage of the nitrogen applied to them.

“Nitrogen use efficiencies [NEUs] tend to hover around the 60% range at best, depending on the cropping environment,” he notes. Some studies put the NEU even lower, at around 50%.

Those numbers mean money down the drain for farmers and consequences for the environment such as dead zones and other polluted waterways. Gates says around 70% to 80% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas footprint comes from applied nitrogen and its subsequent loss.

“The more you get the nitrogen matching the plants’ needs and space and time, the more you can mitigate [environmental consequences],” he adds. “The engineering progress that EnGeniousAg has made in that area has been super impressive and was a big driver for our interest in the deal.”

Nitrogen-fixing crop protection solutions can help, but without certain data, their benefits are limited, suggests EnGeniousAg co-founder Michael Castellano.

“One of the big barriers to biologicals that provide nitrogen, as well as other nitrogen-enhancing technologies like inhibitors, is that there’s a huge uncertainty in what the optimal nitrogen level is,” he tells AgFunderNews. “It’s hard to be certain that you’re getting value from a [nitrogen] product without some data to help you understand what that optimal nitrogen rate is.”

EnGeniousAg’s low-cost nutrient sensors provide near-instantaneous nitrogen measurements in plant tissue, soil and water, thus assisting farms with applying proper levels of nitrogen based on plants’ needs.

“Our sensors provide [necessary] data to determine whether or not a [nitrogen-based] product is working, even if you may not see it in the yield monitor, for example,” he says.

‘The more data points the merrier’

CropX will integrate EnGeniousAg’s technology into farm management system, which CropX CEO Tomer Tzach says will check three very important boxes for the company.

“[EnGeniousAg’S technology] has a huge potential to make a very significant impact on the environment,” he tells AgFunderNews. “it also addresses the huge potential market for us in terms of the ability to save on and improve nitrogen use efficiency. And the uniqueness of the technology is second to none: super strong, super patented, defensible.”

He adds that CropX, which raised $30 million in 2023, was actively seeking a nitrogen sensor technology to add to its growing lineup of farm management tools.

“We believe in owning the data collection layer, otherwise it’s garbage in, garbage out into our system. That’s why we continue to look for additional sensors,” he says.

Past acquisitions of sensor technologies include California-based precision irrigation startup Tule and last year’s deal for Green Brain in Australia.

“The more data points that we can own, the merrier,” says Tzach.

Castellano says EnGeniousAg had a number of suitors in the past. “Ultimately we thought CropX was clearly the best opportunity here going forward, largely because of the highly integrated software and hardware platform that they offer.

“Not only is there a place for our sensors to go, there’s also an immediate opportunity for [the company] to take the data and make it useful for decision-making for the farmer, which is ultimately what will drive improvements with regard to the environment.”